Voice of the Free Press: Local governments need openness laws

May 16, 2011

If lawmakers need a reason why they must toughen the state's open meetings law and make sure it applies at every level of government, they need look no further than Waterbury.

In early April, village officials held a meeting even after they realized they had failed to properly notify the public in advance, and then failed to take minutes of the proceedings. Both are required by Vermont's open meeting law.

While the violations are misdemeanors carrying a fine of up to $500 a person, prevailing practice says that prosecutors are unlikely to bring charges. That means the village officials are unlikely to face any consequences for knowingly violating the open meeting law.

As it stands, local government officials can ignore open government laws confident they are unlikely to suffer any real consequences.

Some lawmakers have suggested bills before the Legislature seeking to toughen the open meetings and open records laws should contain exemptions for local governments. Any lawmaker who makes such suggestions is merely protecting his or her own -- one member of the political class looking after another at the expense of the public interest.

The town governments are no better when it comes to advocating for openness.

The Vermont League of Cities and Towns, the organization of local governments that lobbies on their behalf in the Legislature, is among the most vocal proponent of exempting cities and towns from provisions to better insure access to public documents and meetings.

One of the league's focus is a provision passed by the House and being debated in the Senate Government Operations Committee that would require government agencies to pay legal fees to those who successfully challenge in court the withholding of a public document.

The league argues that small towns lack the resources to comply with laws written with state government in mind, and any serious penalties for noncompliance would be too much for towns -- and ultimately taxpayers -- to pay.

The point of a penalty is to raise the cost of noncompliance to an unacceptable level. As the law stands, too many officials at all levels face no meaningful consequences for failing to follow open government laws.

Why would any lawmaker stand in the way of making local governments more accountable to the people?

Even with stiffer penalties, there's a simple way for local governments to protect taxpayers and avoid paying court costs or other penalties -- obey the law and operate with a bias toward openness.

Until that happens, and it's highly unlikely that it will, the public is better off with legal requirements to force openness with ramifications for failing to do so. It is time for the advocates of government to stop responding as if the people who hold public office are incapable of following the law and acting in the public interest.